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The Dispatch Blog wrote
McCain is coming, McCain is coming
Posted by Catherine Candisky, Statehouse reporter on February 18, 2008
Sen. John McCain will make his first primary-season visit to Ohio Tuesday night, coming to Columbus to watch the Wisconsin Republican primary results.
McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, will be at the Columbus Renaissance Hotel, 50 N. Third St., at 7:30 p.m. The event is open to all Republicans and McCain supporters, the campaign said.
Wednesday, McCain will campaign in Yellow Springs, greeting voters at Young’s Jersey Dairy, a favorite campaign stop and arriving in time for the new homemade flavor of the week – vanilla.
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Vanilla is right
BORING
If he brings his supporters with him it’s going to look like a re-enactment of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video, except entirely white, and in slow-motion.
:shock:McCain in Yellow Springs = wtf? :?
I was in the Renaissance tonight for a few minutes and it was madness. Outside was even better with the Ron Paul supporters and their signs mixed with the folks handing out literature about how evil McCain is.
Hooray for Columbus! :D
Did that comment really serve a purpose other than to denigrate?
Seriously, has anyone here ever been to Yellow Springs? The College(Antioch) & town have been pretty far left for 150 years, or so. Should be interesting.
Isn’t JohnRoss interviewing McCain tomorrow?
Did that comment really serve a purpose other than to denigrate?
No, your absolutely right. I enjoy, and take part in, the political debates on here more than most threads and I took it down a notch in search of a laugh. My apologies.
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Did that comment really serve a purpose other than to denigrate?
No, your absolutely right. I enjoy, and take part in, the political debates on here more than most threads and I took it down a notch in search of a laugh. My apologies.
it only hurts because its true.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
BY CATHERINE CANDISKY
Sen. John McCain shifted his presidential campaign focus to Ohio today, arriving this afternoon in Columbus where he hopes to celebrate a victory in the Wisconsin primary later tonight.
Speaking to reporters at a Downtown hotel, McCain said, “We have to campaign hard here.â€Â
While the Arizona Republican has all but locked up his party’s nomination, McCain said he will continue to compete hard for GOP and independent votes in Ohio’s March 4 primary.
READ MORE
Oh wow it would have been really cool and lots of fun and could of had a big party if only oprah would have come with him, then we all could have really learned something.
Nah, McCain needs bring nothing more than his voting record to be entertaining.
100 years of occupation and permanent bases in Iraq, a country that is not ours and should not have our values inflicted upon them.
P.O.W or not… I don’t care. Who cares? That gives this puppet no reason to be our next president. I’m not worried, he won’t be…
Seeing the security parading around outside of the Renaissance was funny… and in a new Lincoln Navigator… there is nothing ‘green’ about their campaign.
BOO
His bus is still outside our building.
This is going to become a signature attack line against him, but it’s not what he said. Or, at least, not the way you’ve emphasized it.
Permanent bases in Iraq, yes. Occupation, no. He envisions military responsibility being turned over to the Iraqis gradually throughout his first term.
Considering that we have permanent bases in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Diego Garcia, Turkey, and Eritrea in that area, the notion that Iraq would sign on for some is hardly as newsworthy as the media spinmeisters have been leading people to believe.
We have bases remaining from WWII in Japan and Germany, from the Korean War in South Korea, and from the first Gulf War in many of those Middle Eastern countries I named above. McCain wasn’t promising 100 years of war, he was trying to put the concept of long-term presence in historical context.
In general, I agree with your statement. But there’s cultural differences that exist in more extremeist areas of the middle east. Even with small bases, many in Iraq will still look at us as “occupiers”. It was our extended stay in Saudi Arabia that gave rise to Al Quaeda in the first place. We looked at it as harmless and dismissed the cultural insult we were dishing at the Saudis.
Obama and Hillary freely admit that we’ll still need troops at our embassy, but that’s different than a military presence like we have in Turkey, Gemany, or South Korea.
In general, I agree with your statement. But there’s cultural differences that exist in more extremeist areas of the middle east. Even with small bases, many in Iraq will still look at us as “occupiers”. It was our extended stay in Saudi Arabia that gave rise to Al Quaeda in the first place. We looked at it as harmless and dismissed the cultural insult we were dishing at the Saudis.
I think AQ would have risen anyway, and if they didn’t have that excuse, they’d have found another. The overriding political aim of Wahabbism is the “restoration” of the Islamic caliphate (a caliphate that never in fact existed, but was admittedly closer to existing in the past than today).
Westernization is a serious threat to what would be the governing ideology of that regime, should it emerge, and Western military power is one of the biggest obstacles to actually creating it. Given that America and Israel are the two biggest symbols of both Western culture and Western power visible in the Middle East, we were going to be on the receiving end of AQ’s ire no matter what.
This is true, and this is a real difference between the nominees (whoever the Dem nominee is) on this issue.
But I’m closer to McCain, and for the reasons McCain cites: our bases in Germany and Japan were big deals at first, but those issues gradually faded as the politics changed, and in many ways, they helped to change the politics. Nowadays, they’re actually fairly welcome … the communities in Germany where American bases are located tend to be *more* pro-American than the rest of the country. The same applies to the Gulf states where we have permanent bases now.
The same would likely apply to Japan, too, though that’s been complicated because of some serious breaches of military discipline by some of our personnel there (getting in trouble with local law enforcement).
In most cases, however, permanent bases are not only noncontroversial, but actually welcome.
My guess is that far more Iraqis are afraid of other Iraqis at this point than are afraid of us.
I still think you’re discounting the cultural differences that exist in the region. People have been discounting this since the crusades. Bases would just be culturally insulting, and would provide another rallying cry for all extremists.
Floating bases…ok. Bases in less extreme countries…ok. Bases in Iraq…not ok.
All provide you with quick strike opportunities and protect your interests in the region (stability of energy outflows), but one doesn’t create enemies faster than you can kill them.
I still believe that comparing the political differences between the United States and Germany or Japan to the religious differences in this case are just not fair comparisons, nor likely to be fading issues.
Floating bases…ok. Bases in less extreme countries…ok. Bases in Iraq…not ok.
All provide you with quick strike opportunities and protect your interests in the region (stability of energy outflows), but one doesn’t create enemies faster than you can kill them.
And I think you’re seriously overselling the point about “creating enemies faster than we can kill them.” Since at least early 2007, that hasn’t been the case, and very likely wasn’t the case before then. The facts on the ground simply don’t support this. (By this logic, we should never have fought the Nazis or the Imperial Japanese, since that would only have created more of them.)
I’ll post some more links on this when I get home, but the bottom line is that the media trope that we’re creating enemies faster than we can kill them really bears no resemblance to the facts on the ground–it’s an unexamined assumption that proceeds from live-and-let-live political convictions back home rather than an analysis of the evidence as to what’s happening on the ground.
It’s Al Qaeda who’s created enemies faster than it can kill them, not us.